Dieppe

It was a lark. We were on vacation.And I said to somebody, “Boy, I think that things are going to be a little hot here.”We wanted to be trained. We wanted to be fit. We wanted to do as we were told.We can beat anything. What mortal fools.We went down to Southampton where we went aboard the Princess Beatrix with three assault craft hanging on each side instead of lifeboats.Lord Louis Mountbatten came aboard and he come down and gathered us all and told us a joke...... and then he says, “Our destination is Dieppe, because it is not very heavily fortified.”I said, “We’re going to have to take the advantage of surprise!”We got across there without a hitch. You’d think you were going for a Saturday night boat ride.Some were telling jokes, others were praying, and me on the aff deck... I was praying too.I remember an aircraft overhead. It had to be German, and they dropped chandelier flares. We were quite a ways out, but it lit up the Channel, you know. You could see the escort vessels and all these little landing craft.It was like the first of July. It was absolutely fantastic with the tracers and the colours and that were just out of this world.And the flights of Spitfires, twelve at a time, twelve at a time, just squadron after squadron going over and you didn’t know what was going on.It’s the greatest air battle because if you could imagine, the British launched about 3,000 sorties. The Germans launched almost a thousand so we had 4,000 sorties of aircraft all churning around. At the same time all these twin-engine bombers, I think they were Hudsons, were going across. They never hit a damn thing.One of the worst things there was the Stuka dive bombers coming down and screaming, you know, and they would drop these bombs that they had, but the screaming noise was awful.We got into that terrain around 6:00 but we couldn’t land till about 6:30.The boats began to advance and then, as we approached Dieppe, the Germans opened deadly fire on the boats.You should have heard the racket. We couldn’t hear a thing. We were deaf.And the Germans had a real field day. They could pop us off left and right. We were supposed to meet a tired Pioneer Battalion of Germans rushing from the Russian front. That’s who we were supposed to meet. Well, I don’t know, but boy, they sure weren’t tired. The Germans were masters of ranging, masters of fire direction and they had that, they had that area completely, completely covered. They had guns in the cliffs to the right of us, and guns in the cliffs to the left of us, and they had machine guns in the buildings in front of us.Putting those tanks ashore on that heavy pebble. They couldn’t get traction. The tanks were useless. Well, when I say useless, the men in them did everything they possibly could but they were hopeless. You couldn’t move them into Dieppe proper.You never knew when you were going to get her. You don’t in the army. You never know when you’re going to get her.You see the colonel get killed in front of you. You see the sergeant-major get killed in front of you. This is no fooling game boy. You move it.I staggered up the beach and all I could see was dead men and pieces of bodies scattered everywhere. So I was running on top of dead guys and guys crying and screaming for help. Just don’t stop, go.Then a mortar bomb fell to the right of him and I was protected by his body.And I cut his second dog tag off. You wore two dog tags. Leave one on and you take the other one off and the one stays on the body.Most of the dead were at the sea wall. That would be the limit of where they got except for a few who did get into the town. The navy was trying to get landing craft in to get us off, but it was impossible. These mortars, I couldn’t believe anybody could be that accurate with these mortars. It was like they rehearsed it over and over and over.There were a few survivors swimming and... I could see them diving under the water because the Germans were trying to kill them all.The HMS Berkeley came around to pick people up. What they do is they put ropes and nets out. They don’t stop. You better grab and hang on for what you’re worth and you get up on your own. The hull of the ship was just red with blood. Yeah. That was memories of Dieppe.Around eleven o’clock, we saw one of our platoons advancing towards us with Germans behind them. They were using our platoon as a shield. As some of the men wanted to shoot, the company commander said, “No, no. We’re not going to fire and kill our own men.” Then he gave the order to surrender.They came to me and they could see that I was wounded. I was losing blood too. Every time I would talk it would gurgle from this hole in here and it would come up, and there was blood popping and air coming out of this hole.I was pretending to be dead. When the German got to me... He turned my friend over and then, when he got to me... my arm was like that... I’m ticklish like you wouldn’t believe. So I jumped and then he said, “Komm, komm mein Leiber.”We were marched into a school yard and it was in the school yard that a Spitfire come over and going this way and they fired at the Spitfire that went over. So he just circled and came back and saw a bunch of men and he said : “Share this amongst you!” There were quite a few killed including two of our guys. The next morning the trains arrived. They piled us in, 40 men per car, and we headed for Verneuil.Pulled the train, stopped the train at Lammsdorf, the station nearest the prison camp and the first thing we seen is they threw the doors open... were Russian prisoners unloading an ammunition train and the Germans were armed with bullwhips. They put us with our toes and nose to the wall and then they put chains on us, fastened behind our backs.We actually believed we were going to be shot. And we’re hungry then and we’re cold and we’re miserable. To tell you the truth, I didn’t give a damn. Didn’t give a damn.We were supposed to get a medal for Dieppe, but old Churchill said, “No.” He says, “No medals for a failure.”I guess the people that were running the thing had different thoughts on it, but the average soldier, they thought for sure that was just a suicide thing.I couldn’t help saying: “It was a slaughter.” What a waste. Life doesn’t mean much, does it?